The present invention relates generally to managing software deployment, and, in particular, to assessing environment specific maintenance actions for software updates in computer systems.
Modern software applications typically utilize a number of functions, directly and indirectly. The fulfillment of function requests frequently cross multiple operating system components. Software applications may call the functions explicitly via an external call, or, a software application may invoke function A, where function A may subsequently call function B, C, and D. Some software problems (e.g., bugs) may surface in customer environments. The software problems may only surface for a specific set of circumstances (e.g., order of function calls, software level, hardware level or any combination there of) or in highly involved timing situations. Customers desire to keep their system(s) as stable as possible. In order to ensure an enterprise is as resilient as possible to software defects customers must review and apply maintenance (individual fixes to software defects) on a regular basis. Today, the review of software defects is a manual process. It is highly complicated to determine which fixes apply to particular environments, if the environment in which the defect can be encountered exists in the customer's enterprise and which fixes introduce more risk than they stabilize.